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400,000 Additional DSs Available by Year's End
SetupWeasel writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting that 400,000 additional DSs will be shipped to the US by year's end. This will bring the US total to 1.4 million by the end of 2004." There's also a story running on Gamesindustry.biz regarding DS sales being in line with the sales of the Gameboy Advance.
"Harrison said the company did not try to keep the initial Nintendo DS supply artificially low to attract extra attention."
;)
However with demand high and supply low... it makes the news! Strange that...
I had the chance to play one of these with Metroid. I really liked it. There seems to be some discussion over the usefulness of the touch pad and I've found that the touch pad servers to mimic a mouse in fps's quite well. I felt at home pretty quickly. It was quite responsive too. I'm still holding out for the PSP though. I think nintendo games are a little too cute for me.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
My EBay DS Sales will go down the tubes... Now where am I supose to make all my Christmas Money?
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
...what DS stands for... Dual Screen
...if these people just artificially inflate demand around the holidays through talk about "undersupply", and then pop a load of 'em on the market just in time. Nah, couldn't possibly be! [Just like every other year.]
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
While Nintendo has a large buffer in case of a failed console, ($1b) they still try to minimize possible economic hardship. Rather then have a massive run, then lose to a failed console, they slowly introduce new consoles to the marketplace, maintaining profits throughout.
That being said, PSP vs. DS should be fantastic. Both systems have fantastic games lined up for them, and both look to be really, really cool.
I had a chance to play with a DS. First impression? Nifty, but nothing to make me buy it... yet.
no
what the heck is a "DS"? Did I miss anything?
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
It's not an acronym, DS is the name of the system.
The Nintendo DS
Wow that is a suprise: American units outselling Japan Units. I applaud Nintendo of America for boosting available units. Unlike what happened with that tragic accident with the Nintendo 64.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
I'm not sure I can agree with you there. PDA's, while still high in sales, have been falling as multi-function cell phones increase.
You also have to consider your target audience...kids simply don't care about managing a contact list of 100 business cards or balancing their checkbook...they want to play games. I think handhelds are here to stay, and I don't see them being replaced by pda's any time soon.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
"with one excaption, sony's handheld plays all those old ps1 games that you already have, now it might be worth it with such a large and *inexpensive* game base, unlike nintendo"
If I remember correctly, the PSP does not play PS1 games, it uses a proprietary mini-disk type format for each of its games, videos, etc.
As for Nintendo having a large, inexpensive game base, the DS is backward compatible with the GBA, which is backwards compatible with the original Gameboys. That's years and years worth of old games, many at thrift stores.
Your new system doesnt play the old games??? What planet are you from, every version of the gameboy ever made was backwards compatable, hell even the DS will play gameboy advance games.. (i think it will also play regular gameboy games as well.. but not posative of this so wont' claim it to be so) So that right there is a good 10 years or so of backwards compatability. Now speaking of computers, go grab any 10 year old game, I bet you'll have a hard time getting the thing to work on a modern operating system without jumping through some hoops first.
Just thought I'd point out a few flaws in your logic while taking a break at work.
Whodunnit out.
just in case anyone is not aware, the Nintendo portable systems are the most popular consoles on the planet. I don't have the hard #s in front of me, but I think there are probably twice the # of GBAs owned by people than Playstation 2s. And we all know how much of lead the PS2 has on the xbox and gamecube.
Does this mean the PSP will be doomed because the previous generation of handheld gamers are used to nintendo? Certainly not. As technology increases and people become more tech-savvy, i think people start to lose more brand loyalty and start going to the items that have the features they want. If the PSP is what someone is looking for in a handheld device, they'll pick one up. Similarily for the DS.
The one big advantage I see is that the DS can play all previous gameboy games. For those millions upon millions of people with GBAs already, the DS gives them a new system with new and innovative games, and a way to play their old games too. Don't underestimate that. Hell, that may be one of the reasons the Playstation 2 has done so well throughout the years, even though it's graphics technology is inferior to the other consoles... Food for thought
You can pick your nodes, and you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your friend's nodes
The DS uses 802.11b technology for wireless communications. No current software titles support TCP based communication, so they cannot be played online. team xlink is working on "tunneling" the existing DS software titles. Future DS titles will support internet access, but it is currently unsure which titles and when they will be available.
The biggest reason why I got a DS was that I can play GBA games without a Gamecube + Game Boy Player or play games in not-so-well-lighted places (I have the first GBA, passed on the GBA SP).
Or better yet, selling PSP batteries on eBay ;)
</sarcasm>
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
The product's name is Nintendo DS. How can they possibly get more specific than to tell you exactly what it is. Do you want a couple of sentences of summary after ever time the mention it? "The Nintendo DS, a portable game console" etc... It would be silly to do something like that for the PS2 or the Xbox, right? "The Xbox, Microsoft's video game console..." It gets a little redundant.
Also, this is the *games* section of Slashdot. Since the DS has been mentioned in other posts in this section, and even linked to repeatedly, you should know what it is if you're paying attention.
And FYI, I'm also not 14, and I bathe regularly.
400,000 more systems is all well and good... but what about selfish bastards such as myself who've already managed to get theirs and just want more games? The DS itself is quite nice indeed (as other posters have already mentioned... check it out yourself at Best Buy or your local game store if you doubt), but the only game that's really worthwhile at this point is Mario 64 DS, which got kinda old kinda quick. It's a great game and all, and yeah, they changed some stuff around from the original, but it's still just Mario 64. Where's the Metroid game? Where's Final Fantasy III? Where's any mention whatsoever of Zelda? Give me a new Kid Icarus, dammit! This is Nintendo, I expect more first party goodness than the lackluster launch titles are providing me with.
Citizens demand more games!
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx
There are at least TEN people above you complaining about the same thing... guess what? Products have NAMES. They don't call the new ATI card "ATI Really Cool Video Card with Pixel Shading". They give it a name. The name is usually a couple of letters and numbers stuck together. The fact that you don't know the name of a video game console isn't really /.'s fault. You might as well say "What the hell is a Nintendo?"
If, after many dozens of stories on this item, after 500,000 of them have already been sold in the space of weeks, after marketing campaigns and endless flamewars about DS vs. PSP, you still don't know what the thing is, you know what? You just might be out of the fucking loop.
Nope - it sure isn't. I spent way to much on a Pocket PC PDA and I admit one of the primary reasons was retro gaming. I own GBs and GBAs (yes - multiple) but I hate having to carry around multiple small cartridges which can be easily lost.
My PocketPC handles NES, GB, GBC, PC Engine, Sega Master system, Game Gear, Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Spectrum and Apple 2 games as well as some SNES and Genesis (not as well). There is also GBA emulation but its not very good.
The great thing - aside from the nostalgia, is that a lot of these older games are perfect for quick pickup play. Most emulators support memory saves as well - meaning you can put it down at a moments notice even if you are close to getting that high score.
You can fit a hell of a lot of games on a 512MB SD card and Compact Flash drives go up to 4GB if you need more storage.
The added bonuses aside from the usual PDA features are that it plays both audio and video. You get mp3, ogm, avi and mpg playback.
There are also excellent native Pocket PC games including ports of Age of Empires, Warlords 2 and Ultima Underworld. RTS, RPG even FPS games are available.
So yeah its expensive, but it is a hell of a toy if you can justify the cost.
If you have a model with bluetooth and or 802.11b its great for ssh or terminal services too.
My biggest complaint is that someone needs to come out with a gaming oriented model, so we can get a decent button layout. One of the main considerations in my purchase was the dpad and button setup.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
IBM isn't even a big player in the PC market.
I don't know what color the sky is on your planet, but here on blue-sky Earth, IBM's PC business is the third-largest in the industry.
Furthermore, you're comparing purchases for a product that just shipped to the revenues for an entire year. The comparison just doesn't make sense.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
This may be the first console that Blizzard could release a successful game for
No, that would be the SNES. Blizzard made console games (including some very successful ones like Lost Vikings, Rock & Roll Racing and Blackthorne) before they ever made PC games.
Many cards work fine. You can find compatiblity lists on some sites.
"they tend to get raplaced by newer models within a year or so that don't play any of your old games."
The Game Boy Color plays four-color Game Boy games.
The Game Boy Advance plays Game Boy Color and four-color Game Boy games.
The Game Boy Advance SP isn't even a new system per se.
The Nintendo DS plays Game Boy Advance games, but does not play Game Boy Color or four-color Game Boy games. But this is because Nintendo has repeatedly stated that the DS is not intended to replace the Game Boy Advance, referring to the DS as their "third pillar." The idea seems to be to try doing something new in handhelds without sacrificing Nintendo's bread-and-butter that is the Game Boy line. After all, this is the "Nintendo DS," not the "Nintendo Game Boy DS."
Personally, at this point I don't think even Nintendo themselves could unseat the Game Boy line as the top of the food chain, but it seems their intent is to not even try to.
The thing that confuses me about your comment, though, is that the Game Boy is really the only handheld console that has been around long enough for a new hardware iteration to come out. The Lynx, Game Gear, Tiger.com, NeoGeo Pocket Color (among others) all died in their first generation. The only other handheld I can think of that made it into a second iteration was the WonderSwan, and even then the WonderSwan Color played older b/w WonderSwan games. So where are you finding this "tendancy" you're talking about?
"but unlike a handheld the new one still plays your old games"
You sound like someone who doesn't know the joys of getting XP to play a DOS game well, let alone the tricker problem of some of the really old games (I never had to install an app to slow down my GBA's processor to play Metroid II).
"with one excaption, sony's handheld plays all those old ps1 games that you already have,"
As others have pointed out, no, it doesn't. Sony is trying their hand at making a new proprietary format for their PSP (as if they didn't learn anything from the MiniDisc), which means the PSP will only be able to read PSP software, and the PSP will be the only device able to read PSP software (unless they include that functionality in the PS3).
With Sony paying for a new, proprietary media and Nintendo using an older standard that may end up being less expensive to produce, it's almost as if we're about to see a reverse of what happened back when the Nintendo 64 and the PlayStation were competing with each other.
"now it might be worth it with such a large and *inexpensive* game base, unlike nintendo"
New GBA cartridges tend to be $30. DS cartridges seem to be starting between $30 and $40, but I don't think it will be long before they too are consistently around $30 (after all, Nintendo has been working on cartridge technology for a very long time now). PlayStation 2 games, using relatively inexpensive and widely-available media like CDs and DVDs, usually sell new between $40 and $50. Sony seems to expect to get similar performance out of a PSP as they get out of a PS2 (if not equal), but they will not be using such off-the-shelf media technologies like CDs or DVDs or even ROM chips. At this point, I don't think Sony will be able to publish and sell PSP games at the same price as DS games without taking a loss, at least not until this new media catches on, which would require the PSP catching on. So will they be taking losses on both hardware and software at the same time?
I don't remember anything really fun on gamecube aside from zelda.
Then you haven't looked. Case closed. Did you know that an improved version of Metal Gear: Solid was released exclusively for the Gamecube?
Also, Final Fantasy 6 is widely regarded as the best in the series, and it was on the SNES. Metal Gear started on the NES. Of course, many people think that video games started with the PlayStation, so I can't really fault you there.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Nintendo DS is Nintendo's new hand held console. With Dual Screens.
When you read a story about "PSP" it doesn't mean Painshop Pro, it's PlayStation Portable, Sony's portable console.
You're supposed to pick either PSP or DS and love it passionately. You're also supposed to hate the other console and anyone who likes, or even tolerates it.
Probably the fact that I own the same game for the N64.
I'm f#$king magic!